A Cross-School Multidisciplinary Forum for Promoting, Supporting and Celebrating Excellence and Innovation in Education and Technology at Newcastle University Business School
I’d like to take the opportunity to invite NUBS colleagues to the Education and Technology Forum seminars for Semester 2 2020. I think we have a broad array of different types of seminars focused on practise, projects and pedagogic research planned and I hope you’ll come along and join us.
The details are:
Wednesday 19th of February: “Theory Hub: Creating an online theory resource” – presentation by Prof. Savvas Papagiannidis & colleagues – 11am till 12noon NUBS room 2.10
Wednesday 4th of March: “Starting out in teaching-focused
research” – Presentation by Dr. Tracy Scurry – 11am till 12noon NUBS room 2.10
Wednesday 18th of March: “Office 365 – Engagement,
inclusivity and accessibility” – Presentation by Gill Holden – 11am till 12noon
NUBS room 4.23
Wednesday 29th of April: “Online development &
assessment of student’s academic practice skills” – Presentation by Sarah
Carnegie – 11am till 12noon NUBS room 1.14
Wednesday 6th of May: “Creating a Digital teaching case study using simulation” – Presentation by Dr Rebecca Casey- 11am till 12noon NUBS room 2.10
You can find the sign up form here and I will be following up with booked individuals with an Outlook Booking Request for the session a week before as a reminder. The presentations will be for 30 minutes allowing for around 10-15 minutes Q&A and discussion.
JISC recent published the Digital Experience Insights Survey 2019, which is well worth a read through of the findings for HE in particular. It takes 3,485 responses of both HE staff and students from 26 different Universities and so probably represents the best contemporary snapshot of the HE Digital Education Landscape. I don’t want to replicate the reading of this document in this Blog post, but I thought I’d instead pluck out a few figures which I think are worth highlighting and disseminating further.
From my own point of view the amount of staff engaged in digital teaching activities is quite insightful. 62% of HE staff say they would like to be using digital technologies used more in their teaching practice, yet only 11% say they use live quizzing or polling in their teaching practice and only 24% say they’ve been involved in creating digital learning materials for their students in their teaching practice. Far from being disheartening, I would hope these findings would give many lecturers who are involved in those activities both a sense of perspective as to the fact that they are doing more than most. To those who aren’t currently involved in those digital teaching practices I think it also gives a strong message that many are also at starting points on a digital journey.
Classically the main barrier to integrating more digital teaching practices into the classroom is time. This is pretty much confirmed across the sector with only 13% of HE staff agreeing that they feel they feel that have the “headspace” or time to do so. Clearly this figure strongly contrasts with the 62% of staff who say they’d like to do so, and gives perhaps some support for the idea of specifically allocating time for digital development of teaching materials into staff workloads.
Personally I find some of the student responses some of the most interesting to read as well. Given what I’ve already discussed for example it’s quite interesting that on a course/modular level 75% of students rated the digital teaching and learning they were receiving (p.61) as good (45%), excellent (27%) or the best imaginable (3%). Clearly despite the frustrations that staff have over time, what is being produced is, on average, of good quality.
But what do students want, what perhaps is of the most impact to students, and which digital education resources do HE students regard as the most useful to them? That’s sometimes the biggest quandary for lecturers about where to invest their time into digital teaching development, and p.63 of the report helpfully gives some decent insights. HE Students rank as most useful; practice questions to be available online (35%), course related videos (23%), readings and references (20%) and interactive polls and quizzes in-class (15%). This is both useful and perhaps needs a bit of dissection at the same time. I’m not surprised for example by the low ranking of in-class digital interactivity for example given only 11% of HE teaching staff are responding that they do it. At FE level in contrast for example, where the lecturer usage of interactive polls and quizzes in-class is much higher, the FE students rank in-class interactivity as by far the most useful useful and desired digital education approach. Could this be a case of the HE students simply not knowing what they’re missing? Or an indication of a serious divergence in what HE students find the most useful from FE?
Useful data then, but not necessarily to be taken “as read”.
A Newcastle University Business School we have full access to all the Business and Management talks on HSTalks. This is a useful additional resource for students that can add considerable depth to the digital resources that they have available. To summarise the resource provides access to video lectures and case studies delivered by qualified academics or practitioners. The videos can be directly embedded into Blackboard or Canvas, and there’s a very useful guide which shows you how to do this.
I’ve put together a short overview videoof the HSTalks, which goes into basic functions and how to insert the content into Blackboard in a few easy steps. Please do leave below any comments or feedback that you may have about the resource below and your use of it.
In the talk David outlined an ambitious (though possibly necessary as we move more online) step-change in how we need to view ‘The Digital Campus’, suggesting and highlighting that current decision makers seem very willing to sign off on buildings that cost many millions and suddenly question hundreds of thousands being spent on Digital infrastructure. In this I think he may have a point, and certainly as we move towards a 5G environment I think expectations will possibly greatly change as to what digital infrastructure (and level of investment) is necessary to remain at the forefront in Executive Education. It’s difficult to predict what the overall impact will be in 10 years time that revolutions in speed new technologies will bring (it’s possibly like trying to look forward before the first smartphone hit the market and trying to predict the impact of that product) but one certainty is that change is coming and Business Schools need to be aware of that change and keep abreast of what the leading edge of the competition is up-to.
I found that aspect of the talk all very agreeable. The next less so.
David went on to argue for the need for highly differentiated digital infrastructure to appeal to Exec Education. Effectively arguing (quite reasonably) that the expectation’s of individuals paying the high prices of Exec Education would expect some kind of differentiated high-end (dare I say, more plush?) Digital Infrastructure offering that more suited their status, fee’s paid and level of expectations. David highlighted this with photo’s of high end Business hotels (which had very nice websites indeed) arguing that the standard university VLE delivered to undergraduates perhaps is not the same VLE that you’d want to use your Exec Education for, yet most University’s do.
And this is the area of contention and disagreement that I have.
I’ll happily accept that the level of investment in Exec Education in terms of resources created, intensity of blended learning, etc. within a VLE will be very different. But I would question why a different Digital Infrastructure + VLE itself would be necessary.
To give an analogy, you have two paintings, both of them are very different, and perhaps even use different painters, but they still use the same canvas and paints as long as the canvas and paints are of a high enough quality. (that we’re just about to move to Canvas may have been the direction of that analogy).
So i asked the question “why can’t all our students be driving Rolls-Royces?”. In other words, if you as an University possessed a high quality differentiated VLE that was simply better, why wouldn’t you use that for all your education? UG, PG everything?
I think David’s answer perhaps didn’t completely grasp the nuances of the point to be fair to him in a fast flowing webinar situation. His reply was, “well just like in the real world as to why everyone doesn’t drive a Roll’s-Royce. Not everyone can afford one”. That, I think, misses the point of what digital allows you to do.
In the real world the reason we’re not all driving Rolls-Royces is the cost per unit of production. In a digital environment this issue is overcome. If you have an amazing Digital infrastructure or VLE already it would be a matter of adding users, not creating new (hand-crafted) products from scratch like the car scenario.
So, I disagree somewhat. David Lefevre ‘s quite strong arguments for the need for a highly differentiated Exec Education digital infrastructure are very appealing, but ultimately I think that the VLE itself is just a canvas (sometimes literally) that, if it’s good and robust enough (and there’s perhaps always going to be question marks on that front) should be able to be serve multiple audiences.
That said (and in counterpoint to my own disagreement!) it seems that some leading Universities are already travelling in this direction with David highlighting that Imperial has joined a coalition of other university’s to produce a differentiated VLE product for Exec Education. Which brings me all the way back to my first point about “Business Schools need to be aware of that change and keep abreast of what the leading edge of the competition is up-to” and certainly if this is the direction of travel in Exec Education, any market participant would not be doing themselves any favours to ignore it.
Thought-provoking and overall an excellent webinar.
If you have any thoughts on this, please do leave a comment below, and if you’d like to write an Blog post for the forum please do contact me.
At Newcastle University Business School all staff and students have free access to the Financial Times through the library . This allows staff and students to access a number of features of the Financial Times, including developing article lists which can be shared with students, having keyword news alerts for stories on certain subjects, high quality newsletters e-mailed to your inbox on a selection and range of issues.
One of the more powerful tools at a lecturers disposal is the ability to use the free FT Headline API functionality to embed a scrolling and live, constantly updated feed of news stories into a VLE (Be that VLE Canvas or Blackboard). This potentially puts alongside your lecture materials a large amount of contextual, real world, news stories about what is perhaps happening regarding the issues explored in your lecture that week.
The above picture is an example of a widget you can embed into your Blackboard site. The rest of this Blog post will lead you through the three main areas to embed this into your Blackboard site.
How to get your free FT Headline API Code
The first thing you’ll need is a FT Developers Key for creating a Headline API. This sounds a lot more grandiose than it really is, and takes just a few straightforward steps:
The first thing you’ll need to do is go here: https://developer.ft.com/portal/ and sign in. Enter your e-mail address and press next, on the next page saying sign in press under the box saying SSO Sign In “Or use your FT password”, press that. Then sign in using your FT password.
This takes you to the FT for Developers page. On the right hand side under dashboard it says API Catalogue, click that, the click “Request an API Key”.
Your new API Headline key will now be shown to you, it will look like a very long line of letters and numbers. Save that and keep it safe. FT will also send you an e-mail with it in to make things easier.
Openft.org is itself is a straightforward and surprisingly user friendly website for creating FT Headline widgets. The first thing you need need to do is copy and paste you FT API Code into the box saying API Key and then press reset to clear the form. Pressing reset after inputting the API key is important, and problems can occur if you don’t.
The website should now be ready to create widgets for you. The website has two clear sides to it. The left hand side is the input side in which you’ll input all your desired search options. The right hand side is the visualisation of the output, and contains all the tools to further adjust and customise the widget you’re creating.
You now have a number of different search options. The main three you might use are Basic Search, Menu and Multi-search.
Menu is useful if you have particular themes you’re interested in. Just Click on Menu and then you have a number of tick boxes you can click to create a custom widget on Brexit (or similar). Basic Search is useful if you have a straightforward concept or issue you’re wanting to drill into.
Increasingly I find myself using Multi-Search. Multi-Search allows you to search a range of keywords which could bring up articles you’re interested in. So for example if I was giving a lecture on Ethics and CSR. I may have a range of 4-5 different search terms which I might want the widget to bring back results on. The second search box is a categorisation box which is helpful look at a particular search term, it defaults to “All”.
On the right hand output panel the element you’ll definitely want to use is Widget Title to give your output search box a name, however there are a wide range of other customisation options for you to explore.
Once you have the widget just how you want it. Simply click Get Embed Code and copy the bottom box (don’t worry at all about how complex it looks, you don’t need to know any coding at all, this is simple copy and paste of this code).
Embedding your Widget into Blackboard
Deciding where to place your widget it perhaps the best place to start. I personally place it beside the lecture materials to add some context. The process now you have your embed code is very straightforward. Simply click Build Content, then Create Item.
In the text box now press the HTML Button (see below):
Now simply paste your embed code from the Openft.org site into the box which pops up and then press Update.
Then just name your Item (Context: Business Ethics in the News or similar), and press Submit. You can now move this item around just like you would any other Blackboard or VLE item.
I hope you’ve found this “How-to” Guide useful! Please leave any tips or comments in the comments section below.
Bob, Box of Broadcasts, or Learning on Screen (they’ve gone by many names over the years) is a tool which I’ve used for a number of years on my modules. As a resource , when you pick the right programmes and documentaries, it can add considerable depth to the resources available to students to contextualise the subject matter you’ve been exploring in lectures and seminars.
The main benefits of using BoB is that all the material is pre-validated for teaching use so there’s no tiresome checking with the library for permissions etc. If it’s available on BoB it can be inserted into your module as a teaching resource. Possibly more useful for a generation used to Youtube and iPlayer, the BoB controls are highly intuitive.
BoB themselves are continuously improving the site and over the last 2 years have added much better VLE integration, so it’s possible if you’ve reviewed this resource before and found it “clunky” it could have had a sizeable improvement since then.
Some of the most useful improvements (which will also carry over to Canvas) is the improved share options which BoB now has. Including one of the share options being a direct iframe code which can be inserted straight into a VLE. This user friendliness means that with a very short copy and paste into the VLE you can add a video using an pre-setup embed code. WAYFless Links are also available to speed students directly to the resource (see some useful Youtube’s below from the Learning Technology Development team of Edge Hill University).
One of my favourite uses of the resource is to set up playlists for students which will lead them to a range of resources from which they can pick from.
In terms of integration with the learning experience I’ve used this resource in a number of ways including getting students to watch documentaries and write reflective blogs comparing and contrasting what we’ve taught them in the classroom with their views after watching some real world practise. I’ve also used it in a flipped classroom technique for a seminar, where students were to watch after a lecture a documentary on Mercedes’s merger with Chrysler, and the seminar was very much them debating the issues arising.
The downsides of the resource are that it can take a little time to curate and find the videos you want. There is a little set-up time here. A quick time saver can be though to search through other peoples playlists in the search function, you can do this by selecting “search public playlists” on the search function instead of just searching programmes. The last downside is that while it does have a great deal, it doesn’t have everything. I’m still waiting for Enron: Smartest Guys in the Room to show up sometime.
Academic research which has been published regarding the integration of BoB into the curriculum is sparse (and potentially an area for pedagogic research). However JISC have published some insightful guides on using video in teaching and learning, within their larger “Using digital media in new learning models” guide. My favourite part of the guide being one of my favourite views of the use of technology in teaching overall:
Please do leave a comment below if you yourself have had any positive/negative experiences with BoB, or would like to share any further resources or help guides associated with this resource.
